Steve Wozniak predicts 'horrible problems' with cloud computing

STEVE Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with the late Steve Jobs, has predicted "horrible problems" in the coming years as cloud-based computing takes hold.

Mr Wozniak, 61, was the star turn at the penultimate performance in Washington of "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," monologist Mike Daisey's controversial two-hour expose of Apple's labour conditions in China.

In a post-performance dialogue with Mr Daisey and audience members, Mr Wozniak held forth on topics as varied as public education (he once did a stint as a school teacher) and reality TV (having appeared on Dancing with the Stars).

But the engineering wizard behind the progenitor of today's personal computer, the Apple II, was most outspoken on the shift away from hard disks towards uploading data into remote servers, known as cloud computing.

"I really worry about everything going to the cloud," he said. "I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."

He added: "With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away" through the legalistic terms of service with a cloud provider that computer users must agree to.

"I want to feel that I own things," Mr Wozniak said. "A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."

Prior to Saturday at the Woolly Mammoth theatre in Washington, Mr Daisey and Mr Wozniak had met once before, in California after a performance of "The Agony and the Ecstasy" in its original version in February 2011.

Mr Wozniak was moved to tears, but a year later Mr Daisey came under fire when it emerged that sections of his one-man show dealing with the Foxconn plant in China where iPhones and iPads are assembled had been fabricated.

Public radio show "This American Life," which had broadcast portions of "The Agony and the Ecstasy," went so far as to issue a retraction. Mr Daisey meanwhile reworked his script, albeit without toning down his powerful delivery.

On the minimalist stage on Saturday, seated on plain wooden chairs, Mr Daisey and Mr Wozniak came across as a geek version of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their baggy black clothes and matching beer bellies.

The bearded, fast-talking Mr Wozniak sported running shoes and a massive wrist watch. In the theatre lobby, for Saturday only, one of the very first Apple I computers ever built - assembled in Jobs' garage - was on display.

"Everything I designed was purely out of my head, never out of a book," recalled Mr Wozniak, who quit Apple in 1987 after 12 years, taught fifth-graders, hit the lecture circuit and gave away some of his fortune to good causes.

Many in the audience echoed Mr Daisey's concern about Foxconn's work force, but Mr Wozniak said he expected labour conditions in China to evolve as the nation grows richer. He also commended Apple for its oversight of its factories.

"We know we [citizens and consumers] have a voice. We can speak [about labour conditions], but we can't act like, oh, Foxconn is bad or Apple is bad," he said.

Mr Daisey begged to differ: "I hear what you're saying about that fact that everyone goes through an evolution, but it's not as if the evolution was natural in the sense that we are the ones who brought the jobs there."

While Apple designs its products in the United States, all its manufacturing takes place in China - a sore point in an election year in which unemployment and a long-term exodus of manufacturing jobs overseas have been campaign issues.

Nexus 7 Tablet and Android Jelly Bean Announcement Expected Today At Google I/O Conference

By JOANNA STERN

Apple and Microsoft both had their turns to show off their latest software and hardware this month; today it is Google's turn.

Google executives will take the stage at the annual Google I/O Developer's Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, where they will show off the latest versions of Google software, including Android and other services.

Google's next version of its Android operating system is expected to be one of the major points of conversation. Like earlier Android versions, this one is named after a dessert -- Jelly Bean. Ice Cream Sandwich, the current version of Android, was announced last November. Before Ice Cream Sandwich, there was Gingerbread and Honeycomb. Google put out a statue of a bowl of jelly beans at its Silicon Valley campus yesterday.

While there haven't been many details to spill out yet about Jelly Bean, Google is likely to announce a tablet to go along with the new operating system. Rumored to be called the Nexus 7, the tablet is said to have a 7-inch screen, a fast quad-core processor, and a very affordable $199 price. The tablet is expected to go head-to-head with Amazon's Kindle Fire. These rumors have been widely reported, and most recently the Wall Street Journal corroborated the reports.

While there have been lots of Android tablets released, none have been as successful as the iPad. It is expected that the Nexus 7 will ship in July and that Taiwanese manufacturer Asus is making the tablet itself. Microsoft's Windows 8 Surface tablets, which were announced last week, aren't expected until later this year.

But Google isn't only expected to talk about Android and its tablet strategy. The search giant will discuss its maps platform and other services like its Cloud storage solutions, including the new Google Drive. Apple recently ditched the Google Maps in iOS 6; it has created its own 3-D mapping for the iPad and iPhone.

Over 5,550 thousand developers will be at I/O this year. A Google spokesperson also said that the mini-kitchens at the Moscone Center will stock 1,455 pounds of snacks for the three day event. ABC News did see a Jelly Belly truck pull up in front of the conference center yesterday.

Beware the spy in the sky: After those Street View snoopers, Google and Apple use planes that can film you sunbathing in your back garden

Software giants will use military-grade cameras to take powerful satellite images

By Vanessa Allen

Spy planes able to photograph sunbathers in their back gardens are being deployed by Google and Apple.

The U.S. technology giants are racing to produce aerial maps so detailed they can show up objects just four inches wide.

But campaigners say the technology is a sinister development that brings the surveillance society a step closer.

Google admits it has already sent planes over cities while Apple has acquired a firm using spy-in-the-sky technology that has been tested on at least 20 locations, including London.

Apple’s military-grade cameras are understood to be so powerful they could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows. The technology is similar to that used by intelligence agencies in identifying terrorist targets in Afghanistan.

Google will use its spy planes to help create 3D maps with much more detail than its satellite-derived Google Earth images.

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, warned that privacy risked being sacrificed in a commercial ‘race to the bottom’.

‘The next generation of maps is taking us over the garden fence,’ he warned. ‘You won’t be able to sunbathe in your garden without worrying about an Apple or Google plane buzzing overhead taking pictures.’

He said householders should be asked for their consent before images of their homes go online. Apple is expected to unveil its new mapping applications for its iPhone and other devices today – along with privacy safeguards. Its 3D maps will reportedly show for the first time the sides of tall buildings, such as the Big Ben clock tower.

Google expects by the end of the year to have 3D coverage of towns and cities with a combined population of 300million. It has not revealed any locations so far.

Current 3D mapping technology relies on aerial images taken at a much lower resolution than the technology Apple is thought to be using. This means that when users ‘zoom in’, details tend to be lost because of the poor image quality.

Google ran into trouble when it emerged that its Street View cars, which gathered ground-level panoramic photographs for Google Maps, had also harvested personal data from household wifi networks.

Emails, text messages, photographs and documents were taken from unsecured wifi networks all around Britain.

Google claimed it was a mistake even though a senior manager was warned as early as 2007 that the extra information was being captured. Around one in four home networks is thought to be unsecured because they lack password protection.

Little has been revealed about the technology involved in the spy planes used to capture the aerial images.

But they are thought to be able to photograph around 40 square miles every hour, suggesting they would be flying too quickly and at too great a height to access domestic wifi networks.

Like Google Maps, the resulting images would not be streamed live to computers but would provide a snapshot image of the moment the camera passed by.

Google pixellates faces and car number plates but faced criticism after its service showed one recognisable man leaving a sex shop and another being sick in the street.

Amie Stepanovich, of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre in America, said she believed Apple and Google would be forced to blur out homes in the same way Street View pixellates faces.

She said: ‘With satellite images, privacy is built in because you can’t zoom down into a garden. Homeowners need to be asked to opt in to show their property in high definition – otherwise it should be blurred out.’

Apple has previously used Google for its mapping services but last year it emerged it had bought C3 Technologies, a 3D mapping company that uses technology developed by Saab AB, the aerospace and defence company.

At the time C3 had already mapped 20 cities and it is believed to have added more with Apple’s backing. Its photographs have been shot from 1,600ft and one C3 executive described it as ‘Google on steroids’.

There are already 3D maps available online for most big city centres, but the images are often low resolution, meaning they are of little use for navigation and users cannot zoom in on detail.

Critics have argued that Apple and Google will face a backlash if they offer detailed 3D mapping of residential areas in suburbs and rural locations.

Apple’s Proposed ‘Spaceship’ Campus Comes Alive in New Floor Plans

By Christina Bonnington

Apple has grand plans for a secondary campus in Cupertino, California. The city just released a treasure trove of floor plans, technical drawings, and renderings, so now we can see exactly what Apple has planned.

Construction on Apple’s Campus 2 is expected to begin later this year (pending final approval from Cupertino’s City Council) with construction completing by 2015. The four-story, 300,000 square-foot circular structure, which according to the late Steve Jobs looks "a little like a spaceship landed," will eventually host 13,000 employees.

Apple isn't ditching its corporate headquarters at 1 Infinite Loop, though: The new campus will act as a separate, supplemental research facility to the company’s current campus.

In May, Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer sent area residents a brochure detailing what to expect from the proposed campus. Besides not replacing 1 Infinite Loop, the structure will be LEED certified, with a huge solar array on the main roof.

Campus 2 won’t be open to the public, but it will feature a variety of amenities for its employees, like a fitness center and an auditorium for product events.

iPads could scan palms for passwords

By Matt Liebowitz

Like palm-activated ATMs and retina-scanning smartphones, tablet computers like the iPad may soon authenticate their rightful users by reading the unique movement of their hands, not their passwords.

Napa Sae-Bae, a doctoral student at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, is working to build an app that, using multitouch sensors, will biometrically authenticate tablet users' hand gestures. Her goal, she told NextGov, is for the tablet device to recognize its owner's specific biological traits — their hand shape and finger length, for example — and use those unique characteristics, which do not change, to replace passwords, which run the risk of being cracked.

Although she says it will be at least a year before her app is ready, Sae-Bae has already developed an iPad app that asks users to make gestures on a touch screen, such as rotating an open palm and opening a closed fist, in order to verify their identity. The hand sensor technologies she's using are currently available and already used, in different capacities, on iPads and Android tablets.

She also built a biometric-analyzing algorithm that will be the technological basis of the app; in experiments with 34 people, she achieved a 90 percent accuracy rate in authenticating the hand movements made by each participant, NextGov said.

Sae-Bae's work falls in line with other advancements in biometric authentication that have made headlines in recent months, both for the consumer market and for the government. As part of its human measurements and signatures intelligence (human MASINT) program, the U.S. Air Force has expressed interest in developing security cameras that can detect a suspect's age and ethnicity, and even whether that person is a terrorist smuggling a bomb.

Last month, a Japanese bank announced that beginning in September, it would equip 10 ATMs with biometric sensors that read customers' palms for identity verification.